Useful NPCs - Or how to contribute to the game community

From: yorkaturr
Date: 2002-08-07 10:50:47

Raeky proposed that NPCs, upon discovering a dead body, would haul it to a graveyard, perhaps dig a hole for it, and maybe drop it there and stick a cross on the mound for the final touch up. What this implies is that NPCs would - generally speaking - perform trivial tasks in favor of their communities.

In addition to properly burying corpses, they could, for example, gather firewood, ore rocks, rubbish, and all kind of loose items that they would find, and haul them to the appropriate places. Some NPCs might be mean, though, and keep miscellanious discovered items for themselves.

I'm sure there are many other tasks that NPCs can perform, but these would certainly make them look lively.

From: sweatshop
Date: 2002-08-27 06:15:25
In-Reply-To: 1782

To Raeky and Takomtor:

perhaps this will clear things up a little.

http://majik.netti.fi/hm/majik-design/0843.html

From: raeky
Date: 2002-08-11 04:13:47
In-Reply-To: 1782

I love the idea, npcs can run shops, and collect wares for them to sell on there own. Or even *gasp* hire other npcs to do this for them. This would of course require some sort of AI thats pretty advanced. :P

From: Takomtor
Date: 2002-08-08 07:43:55
In-Reply-To: 1782

I still think that instead of inventing and discovering possible jobs for NPCs we should design mechanism that doesn't require them.

Let's take corpses... if (yes this is just to promote my idea) body would contain "mana" even after death, there would be very good reason to haul it up to some special place.

Firewood, ore mining... the same case, if there is fluctuating prices, revenue from mining soon adjusts to the level that makes it appealing especially for low level characters.

MUDs need NPCs since life there is so static, if no one wants to gather firewood, then everybody justs has to bear with it or gain nice extra revenues in near monopoly market.

One thing could be done to encourage this - design these collection etc trivial tasks so that while doing them, character would use some general skills and thereby would also gain some vital experience.

The approach of doing work instead of killing butterflies or frogs (or what ever other games give for newbies) is very appealing. Ok, one more thing this hack-slash-mud etc gives just a one formula for player to go over and over, we should reach for something more.

From: yorkaturr
Date: 2002-08-08 12:21:07
In-Reply-To: 1784

Of course, I am completely supporting the idea of making trivial tasks appealing to players, and I think it is even necessary, as without trivial tasks what is there left? Fighting, both in the physical and mental sense.

However, the motivation behind making trivial tasks alluring to players cannot be experience, as what can one learn from harvesting carrots? Instead, the immediate use should be mostly material in nature (as so are most trivial tasks), such as gaining money by selling, or obtaining food and supplies.

The ultimate motivation should, however, be the discovery of new interesting tasks, methods, places and functional patterns within our world. In order for this to work, it is of utmost importance that there is a considerable amount of these trivial tasks to do. The environment should be interactive without exception, and there should be space left for experimentation as well.

As for NPCs, I don't see a conflict of interests here. NPCs wouldn't actually perform any intricate tasks the players do, such as mining or chopping down trees, instead they would simply deliver and gather things, guard places, light street lanterns etc. In short, this could be summed up by saying that NPCs do not perform complex interaction with the environment.

From: raeky
Date: 2002-08-11 04:25:27
In-Reply-To: 1784

Even in this MMORPG and all such games need NPCs. Without a npc either trival tasks would have to be automaticly done, like a body vanish or wares just appear in stores, or you need some sort of NPC to do this task. Visually speaking seeing someone carry a bundle of firewood or ore to a store, and then sell it, is far better then that store just haveing an infinite supply that just magicly appears.

Personally to add depth and visual appeal to a city, it will need occupants that are always present. The starting citys should be decently large, and contain plenty of people, NPCs. The players who first start shouldn't be given the task to create whole citys and start the economey them selves, thats not right. It should already be in place.

We are not saying that if you want ore you HAVE to get it from a npc, you your self can go collect firewood or collect raw materials for shops or whatever. But also haveing NPCs out there doing it and maintaing shops gives the game a whole different feel.

Some NPCs like yokra said can be greedy and keep the items for them selves, or even some NPCs can be very primitive and find a shiny object, say a sword, and decide to sacrafice it to the god of the cave. they haul everything valueable they find down there and keep it. These caves would be very VERY difficult and dangerous for a player to go and pillage all the goods, thus it would make VERY good and rewarding contiuneing quests for groups of players to accoopmlish.

These "trash" NPCs can even (i've disccused this in great detail in another thread) have computer help to find the dead bodies or objects that a player once held but dropped and seek them out. This way if a player is out adventureing alone and dies, these NPCs will find the objects before the player can either have friends go get them or build a new character enough to go get them him self.

The objects are not destroyed, they are just moved to another place in mass.

NPCs for citys, can be the classic city guards, and shop keepers, but these are not like MUD versions that have simplistic tasks or stand in one spot. they will look like a PC player and possibly even talk to players to a limited degree. They will have a lifespan and collect there own wares to sell or grow them. Guards can be bribed and bought. You can do anything to a NPC that you could do to any other PC, even form friends with it and it would follow you arround and help you.

I don't see the reasoning behind your statements.

From: Takomtor
Date: 2002-08-08 15:19:28
In-Reply-To: 1786

Just a slight curiosity here.

Few days ago I saw an old woman in a street kitchen, she was gutting a very BIG fish. She was just unbelievably fast and accurate. Wouldn't like to go and pick a fight with her and as it is Taiwan, she might even know Taiji... huh?

I imagine that carrot harvester gets to be as good with a small pick (whatever) as she was with the knife. Dependencies with heavy tools and miners, loggers are easy to make and street cleaner should finally get to be rather impressive pole user. If you employ yourself as a TNT affiliate and carry shit from Center to periphery you should still develop some endurance and strength... hmm, and resistance to farting.

I agree, there is not much experience and skills to be learned in these low level jobs, but they still should be related to the weapon skills etc.

Much more interesting approach is the one with slaves, since having slaves, would also bring financial impediments in a form of food and housing... maybe registering etc.

NPCs are too disconnected from the game world, too autonomous. Yeah, still foaming about them... but I don't mind if they are in the game. Especially if their role is to light those street lights (that was very good example) so so so so...

good night.

From: raeky
Date: 2002-08-11 04:35:30
In-Reply-To: 1786

I dissagree here. NPCs should be able to do everything that a player can do. Likely most at the start will not know much but what you say, collect goods and simple tasks. But I propose that NPCs can learn the same way players learn (modified a bit, cause you teach a npc). You can for example hire a npc and then teach him how to make weapons, be a blacksmith, metalurgy, etc.. do tasks for you. You can command an entire workforce of NPCs that you've taught/bought and trained to do what you want. And your off aventureing while your NPC worforce is makeing you $.

These skilled NPCs would command a higer "wage." they can know what there worth, and even become greedy and want higher wages, quit working for you, go somewhere else, travel, start there own business, anything.

I'd like the game to have such dyanamic AI with the NPCs that they are basicly a real player, but computer controlled.

From: raeky
Date: 2002-08-11 04:37:04
In-Reply-To: 1787

NPCs can be made more dynamic then a "autonomous robot."

From: Takomtor
Date: 2002-08-11 10:31:31
In-Reply-To: 1788

Well... I believe we already know all the opinions in this matter (to have NPCs or not).

I would love to have intelligent NPCs, but a faint of realism would be appreciated here, such a task should belong to some AI development institute with gigantic government funding.

However, we can (maybe) put together a simple GUI added with some crude methods to simulate life. That is the first step. People acting together and against eachother. Can it be more simple?

Again, how would NPC use the money it manages to pool up

From: Takomtor
Date: 2002-08-11 10:56:57
In-Reply-To: 1789

Why wares would appear in stores? They are there because somebody made them or arranged their transportation. Body wouldn't vanish, it would stay until decomposed or eaten or moved by something.

There couldn't be stores that have magical inventories.

Don't understand why economy should be in place.

Having NPCs gives whole the same feeling as with the other games.

I read your trash people description, I think the whole idea of these creatures was to prevent players from benefitting from their old equipment and as a such it works ok. However, these are not NPCs yet, in a sense of classic RPG there was players, NPCs, monsters and general enemies. NPCs should be sort of reflections of the players in general, but they just won't have the wits to go about.

"You can do anything to a NPC that you could do to any other PC" except have that simple but productive conversation...

I can accept the usage of NPCs but by saying that they will do this and that and even more etc it is just too much for NPC to accomplish.

I suggested sort of a off-game status for a player, when character would continue players life in a simplistic way... therefore this off-game guidance would probably manage to kill character if left alone for a longer period of time.

This of course resulted into debate of multiplayerism, but what if off-game status would be so stupid that it wouldn't be able to support character, in a search of food or shelter...

reasoning behind my statements? guess it is opposite from you.

From: dazzt
Date: 2002-08-14 10:43:07
In-Reply-To: 1790

Yeah, having NPCs that would be "just like" real players would be nice, I think everyone could agree on that.

But.

The problem is that AIs are hideously difficult to implement. Considering the scale of the game, there would be _lots_ of them. Moving the NPCs in a free 3D environment is already difficult and cpu-intensive enough due to pathfinding stuff (there are solutions, but most need lots of memory or artist effort), but if you make each NPC an autonomous unit the problem escalates since their actions need to be calculated constantly.

At this time, I wouldn't rely on having an extremely advanced AI but instead design the gameplay so that it would work with not too intelligent NPCs. Of course we can implement more advanced AI stuff later if we manage to come up with some simple, yet efficient model, but for the time being I'd stick with simpler models.

From: Takomtor
Date: 2002-08-11 10:29:12
In-Reply-To: 1791

I am happy to call them animation from now on. Yes, they can be dynamic. You go and buy an item he will take your money and an item magically appears in the inventory. How an NPC would have the intelligence to go to the market and source his/her supply of wares? So, they can be more dynamic but fail to be intelligent

What is the NPC doing in the game? Why he/she exists? Spend a day in store and in the night spend it on the street outside the shop. What about free time? I believe that everybody in the game would be able to spot a NPC from their behaviour (or lack of it as it usually is)

If these mindless beings are to be added, they should have very clear distinction from players, maybe some sort of clay golems that can be taught skills and blueprints. Some kind of magical creatures that you can go and buy when you have enough money. That would be a real distiction from the genre.

From: raeky
Date: 2002-08-11 21:26:30
In-Reply-To: 1793

I'm not quite sure why you detest the name NPC, they would just appear like a regular player, excpt when you mouse over them they would be identified as a NPC instead of a PC. But other then that, they can work, live in houses, own houses, build there own house, go to a tavern, or go out adverntureing or set on the corner of a street in there free time.

It could be difficult to code, but you can give the npcs a good path naviagation algo that would let them walk correctly arround obsticles and through the wilderness.

They could even have a basicly AI for speech, and talk back to players, learn players and reconize them as frend or foe, learn more vocabulary, etc...

I don't think there should be these NPCs that set there and sell things but do nothing but that, and are always in the same spot. They should be very dynamic and even move from region to region if they wish. (some could be god/sage provoked or event provoked, if a friend is going to another area, be it PC or NPC, they could decide to follow. or if the % of foes in an area gets to high, they would move. Or if they're racist and don't like Elves, and elves start showing up often in his area, he would move. lots of dyanmaic stuff here.)

Remember forget everything about MUDs this isn't a mud, so because we call it a NPC dosn't mean it will be a mindless mob like in a MUD.

From: raeky
Date: 2002-08-11 21:38:39
In-Reply-To: 1794

Same way a player would, npcs have to have food and water and shelter. They have to have cloathing and weapons. Thus they need to either find, make or buy these. We've discussed the concept of a bank, (not a global bank, but 1 building that isn't connected elsehwere where you can store money. it could be robbed, but its safer then sticking it under a rock.) NPCs could/would store there money in banks, use it to buy things they need, or even if you befriend a NPC to enough degree they could give you some money or items. NPCs should also have the ability to trade and barter for goods, since most of the trade in the game likely will be without money. since money has to be made, and is rare anywhere but big cities.

From: raeky
Date: 2002-08-11 21:34:20
In-Reply-To: 1795

If we code NPCs that are able to seek out there own food and shelter and not die because they are to stupid, then we've already accomplished the code for the offline pc's to keep them alive.

I wouldn't think it would be very fun if you can IMEdETELY tell, ohh thats a npc. of you see players say "ohh you can by these wonderful potions at John Jadfs in Hodai, hes always at the corner of Vine and East by the fountain."

NPCs should be dyanmic enough that they have to support there own life like a player would. NPCs shouldn't be imune to hunger/thrist or no need for shelter.

NPCs should also have the ability to learn anything a player can do, that way NPCs can keep the world running if players go offline. I think for the beggining of the game VERY few people will want to commit there play time to medial tasks, and thats why we need NPCs to be doing them.

Players can do everything a NPC can do and NPCs can do everything a player can do. Thats the bottom line.

Yes NPCs can't have meaning full conversations, but they could have conversations, like you could ask one "what did you do today?" and it would tell you, or you could ask directions to somwhere if they know and feel like it they could tell you, or they could teach you something you didn't know, get my point?

From: origon
Date: 2002-08-12 14:21:52
In-Reply-To: 1796

Why have players at all?

From: Takomtor
Date: 2002-08-15 09:03:54
In-Reply-To: 1796

Let me try to express myself in a bit more orderly fashion.

1. NPC exists as a stuffing of the skeleton that is called the single player game world, it is much more fun, when one can interact with the environment. Having real player sort of levels the single player argument.

2. NPC exists as a plot developer, that mysterious man that arrives and saves one's sorry ass. We don't really have plots... do we? I would say that in the beginning it is a nice accomplishment just to let people finally interact and play the game.

3. NPC as a quest starter and developer. Well, this is obviously nice, if we are to have pre-programmed quests... seems like it, as far as it comes to the discussion here on the board. However, quests could be given by valid organisations like church, cult, guild, city, village, teachers and masters. So, quest would always have a driving force that pushes game forward, e.g. playerkiller on loose, for the stopper of this menace, will be given big area of land with lots of resources and a right to tax that area. This would then be away from the village's or city's resources, but this nobel group or single hero could bring some desperately needed activity to the city in form of a development program.

4. NPC as worker. A bank that is always open or at least has fuwushengy (servant, teller) that always does the job. Nice indeed, services roll and player can get everything in very convenient manner. However, what will players do, anyway, NPCs are much better suited for daily routine... well, off he/she goes and adventurers the countryside, finding lots of treasures (god knows where all this tingling stuff comes from) comes to town and replenishes oneself. I just don't see any possibilities for a player to compete against the low opportunity cost of NPCs, no matter what, it will be NPC-game features and then PC-game features. Player has to pay for the game with one's time and internet connection, therefore player will just try to take an advantage of the NPCs. Hire them to work for the farm and sell the food for the growing amounts of NPCs that keep on breeding like rabbits, given the right conditions. Surely one can argue that NPCs can be designed so that there are no flaws etc. but then we just need to spend rest of our days fine tuning different bugs and market irregularities.

Well, I was expecting to write a huge list, but - heh - far from a list... anyway, some pointers.

Some closing words. Why can't we just let the players play and force them to create a world. When one puts really some effort to creating the playing environment, maybe we can then enjoy the benefits of NOT experience points focused game system. It won't be just treating everything as some kind of obstacle or opportunity, but consciounce about the effort behind all the services, items, materials, information... what else is there? Everything they create.

From: Archantes
Date: 2002-08-12 00:31:28
In-Reply-To: 1797

I think for the beggining of the game VERY few people will want to commit there play time to medial tasks, and thats why we need NPCs to be doing them.

If you mean that there will be very few people that grow carrots, mine ore or keep a shop, I disagree. If people gain something by selling carrots, fishing or making houses, they'll do it. People do not just adventure around because its fun to adventure around. They do it to gain something. And you can gain power, wealth and status by doing some trivial task - for a while - and then moving along in your career, and when running out of money, come back again. And still, there will be others that follow the example.

If there is lack of carrot growers, it will be very profitable to grow carrots and vice versa, so the system will stay in balance.

But, however we need NPCs, some. Guards, bankers, shopkeepers. And I say they should have as similar 'life' as any PC living a peaceful life in a town. This means running away or defending when attacked, eat, sleep at home, walking to job buying some food etc.

This should however not limit the possibilities of the players. If someone wants to gain some money by guarding a town for a while, let him do it.

The possibility to hire NPCs should be reconsidered. This makes the game less dependant on player relations, and therefore somehow.. say, 'play a settlers game' -like.
I do not like that concept at all.

From: raeky
Date: 2002-08-13 07:46:11
In-Reply-To: 1800

haha.. :)

From: Archantes
Date: 2002-08-12 20:36:56
In-Reply-To: 1800

After all this game is about NPC relations..

From: raeky
Date: 2002-08-17 19:49:59
In-Reply-To: 1811

how simple? npcs that don't pathfind? just stand in one spot, speek a preset list of phrases?

Because of the massive size of the majik world, and the possiblity of i venture millions npcs living in it, the cpu would be working plenty hard if it had to in real time plot paths for all these npcs.

Possibly you can just plot the projected path of the npc if no players are arround, but not really do full calcuations, just the npc magicly appears somewhere, since no player is arround to see that, no harm no foul. If a player is in visual distance of a npc, it will behave properly and fully path find. Otherwise the npc "Decides" it wants to go here, and the computer calculates a "average" time it would take for it to travel that distance, then the npc just stands there waiting for that time to go up then blam its at that spot.

This of course wouldn't work very well if npcs are to find things by "visual" sight, So npcs will have the knowledge of where everything is, then just plot a path to pick it up, then a path to take it back. The player would never know that this NPC 5 miles away isn't really walking from point A to point B, but in fact just warps there after a specific time has passed.

Problems with this are, that if a player where to walk through the projected path, and the npc is supost to be there at that time if he was really walking, then the players might catch onto something. Hey i was in that pass all day, and i saw the npc before i got there, and when i exited the other side he was there as well. So we'd have to work through such issues. Possibly in areas where there is only one path, the npc would warp to the start of that area, then really walk through it, then once on the other side warp to his destination, this would to the players eye inside that "valley" or whatever, they would really see the npc walk, but never see the warping part.

Another problem would be what if the npc while setting there waiting for his time to be up for the warp, a player stumbles in that area. I say the computer instead of projecting the full complete path it projects a few points on the path every so often. And the npc would warp to those smaller points in less time, and if the computer notices a player aprocheing the "visual boundry" of where the npc is, the npc would simply start walking, the computer would plot a corse to the next "warp" point, and the npc would walk there, if the player isn't in visual sight again when it reaches there, it would wait and warp to the next, otherwise it would plot then walk to the next.

This should greatly reduce cpu overhead for all those little creatures and animals out in the wilds that no one sees. Although some more code for a animal would be neccessary, i'd think, an animal dosn't behave like a human.

From: raeky
Date: 2002-08-17 19:37:51
In-Reply-To: 1829

My thoughts of early game life in Majik. The first time MMORPG player that starts playing Majik, will likely want to explore and see the majik world, and not do medial tasks, same goes for experienced mmorpg players, but they will understand the benefits of doing a medial task to earn a lot of money, then outfit them selves and go explore. Ultimately every player would want to explore and do quests, that would be there driving force to do any medial task is to get enough $ or experience or whatever to explore or travel.

By nature the majik world is HUGE, the island of nemen is some 16km across, but it alone is just a tiny speck of the whole world. That is A LOT of space to occupy, and thus allow players to build cities and infrastructure.

But in such a huge vast world, the overwhelming majority of players will not want to set around and run a bank, or farm for carrots for the bulk of there online time, they will want to do something fun.

NPCs will be completely necessary to keep city life working, and even operate far out posts, or protect popular travel roots (npc guards that travel along the routes regularly). A NPC in majik, yes likely won't be able to hold a reasonable conversation, but they could respond to simple commands and do reports about things, tell you if they've seen a player recently and where. Creating a new "merchant" class NPC would spawn a new character (a god command or possibly sage). this new character would look like any other player, and start off homeless jobless etc, unless specified by a god or sage to do a specific task like a Bank teller. Otherwise it will go out and find work or create its own shop, collect all the wares it needs to sell from the surrounding area, and set up shop. It will sleep somewhere, save money, buy its self things, build its own shop/house as it gets more money, even move to another area if it doesn’t get enough business.

NPCs shouldn't not exist because you don't like the concept of them. NPCs can for sure be quest givers, we can have little outposts way out in the middle of nowhere, where some simple shops exist, and some just "town folk" npcs, that one could talk to, and they will give vague references to some quest, that you can then decide to follow up on, it could either be folk lore, or the result of a real place/creature.

Talking to these npcs, shouldn't be too difficult, for the sake of ease of programming, but not for realism, when you initiate chat with a npc you would be presented with a little menu that gives you some options, when talking to them you only get a set number of "phrases" or questions in your list to ask, and then the npc would respond to those "intelligently." The other harder to code method would be write some sort of speech/language parser that would recognize the nouns, verbs, subjects etc of a sentence and then intelligently decide what was asked, and respond accordingly. that would be ideal, but VERY hard to program.

Anyway, it all boils down to convince, npcs would be convent to have, it would be nice to hire them to do tasks for your business, it would be nice to teach one to do things and have it follow you around, it would be nice to be able to befriend them or just hire them to do anything. It would be more realistic if they can do anything a player can do and vice versa.

When majik starts I think its already been decided that there will be at least 1 preexisting city on nemen, this city would be populated with NPCs. As more players come in, we can give instructions to npcs that they need to move. And they will start migrating to another city on nemen, (thus allowing players to discover this other city by following them.) and as that city becomes populated, hopefully by then we'd be able to make some more surrounding islands around nemen, and npcs can move there, and thus players, and so on. NPC migration wouldn't be like a mass exodus they would just simply stop working one by one sell what they have and move, a couple a day to this new area. Players would notice, hey where’s my banker going, and follow him, possibly talking to the npc it would give some references to this new area that they heard about and are going there to find work. This would be a good way to get players to find new areas we add, by causing npcs to start traveling to and from.

From: Takomtor
Date: 2002-08-18 05:28:49
In-Reply-To: 1867

Our idea of the early game seems to miles apart. Once you said (I'm fairly confident it was you) that walking in wilderness should be very dangerous and all the issues like water food carrying capasity should be regarded.

Very good idea. I think that this concept determines the difficulty of the game from the start, those players who would head off to map the great outdoors as soon as the character is created, would find out that there are no easy "hey there is a deer, I'll run and catch it, kill it and eat the leg that it leaves behind when it dies" Go around and you notice water to be rather difficult to find, character gets tired and in this huge environment you don't seem to come across other players. So, who would be so stupid to put one's efforts to exploring, when you can do vital background checks in the starting city (maybe the only city in the whole world, who says that we need to have HUGE world just for the sake of HUGEness and then end up watering it down by populating it with dummies) learn skills, create some guangxi and connect yourself.

YES, you are completely right, these simple things that we do, would be in order to have the means to go about and explore. If we have NPCs doing this work, what is there to do for newbie player? If NPC already mines gold, I believe everybody prefer to buy the gold from this reliable NPC who doesn't have the dream to go trekking or face frequent delays etc. Having reliable supply of materials steals the importance from player characters and forces them to e.g. try to steal the materials, create their own shadow economy, kill the NPCs market power by stopping anyone to enter the shop, therefore taking away NPCs income source and ultimately killing the NPC in starvation afterwards one could go to the shop and take what one would want.

Your description of NPCs life is fitting, but I just can't imagine anyone to be able to code them so well that they would really function.

Well, now I got to go and get some of that delicious peibing duck from the vendor in downstairs

From: yorkaturr
Date: 2002-08-18 18:22:53
In-Reply-To: 1868

I think optimization is a familiar term to our professional programmers.

From: ReSpawner
Date: 2002-08-19 02:38:00
In-Reply-To: 1868

I really liked this idea... maybe could be worked on a little bit but it could work... becose if it is programmed very well then none whould ever notice the diffrence

From: yorkaturr
Date: 2002-08-18 18:20:37
In-Reply-To: 1874

Yes, players will most likely want to learn the basics of gameplay by socializing with other players in populated areas. This is both necessary, because it is unlikely that one would survive in the wilderness without proper preparation and learning, and practical, because it will also mean that players create initial social contacts within the game world which they are likely to keep, thus forming groups. And groups are what we want.

Exploration will eventually happen, but it is likely that it will be done by players who are already fluent with most survival techniques and a great many gameplay features.